


Roses and Thorns

by NightsMistress



Category: October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 00:33:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toby muses on the Rose and Thorn of Shadowed Hill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Every Rose Has Its Thorn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [subjunctive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/subjunctive/gifts).



> My thanks to SlowMercury for the beta!

The more I learn about Luna’s life, the more I wish I didn’t know.

Luna was born at the twilight of the marriage of two people who I wouldn’t trust to raise a rock, let alone a child. People have children for many reasons. I had Gillian because I loved Cliff and I wanted a child that was his and mine. My mother’s reason for having me is turning out to be one of the biggest mysteries of my life. I always wonder if Luna was born to repair a marriage that had long decayed, or whether she was to save Acacia. How she was supposed to do this, I have no idea.

The kind of marriage Acacia and Michael had is one that you either leave by flinging yourself out as far as possible and hoping you achieve escape velocity, or stay and accept the tragic futility of passive resistance. Acacia had done the latter for decades, staying with Michael as he twisted from something wild and strange to a monster in Firstborn skin. She surprised me at the end when I fought Michael, when I pressed the knife against the fragile skin of his throat and she handed me another to see the job done. But Acacia had stayed. She had stayed in the place where she had raised her youngest child until that child ran from her father into the Summerlands.

Unlike her mother, Luna chose to run, draped in the skin of a dead kitsune girl, and hadn’t stopped running. Shedding her nature along with her face, the only clue of her true heritage were the roses that bloomed in Shadowed Hill. The same roses that, had she stayed in Acacia’s forest, would never have been able to grow. You could say Luna’s flowering roses are a testament to the tenacity of the goodness in Luna’s spirit. After all, she is the loving wife of a hero of Faerie, and a noble hero deserves a noble wife. That’s the way the stories go. I wouldn’t think that though; roses may be beautiful but that just makes it easier to not notice the thorns. 

Luna warned me repeatedly not to trust any child of Michael, had told me that everyone forgets that roses have thorns, but I hadn’t thought it applied to Luna until I cut my fingers on her thorns. I’d bled for her. I still haven’t decided whether our relationship can recover from her sending me to my death. 

It would be easier if I could hate her. Hate is pure. It’s easy. You can use it as a weapon. I can’t hate Luna though. For all that she sent me off to my death, I remember her welcoming me into her home when I was a gawky, half-finished changeling stray that her husband had brought home. She wasn’t a mother to me like Lily was, but she was someone who had sheltered me until I became the person I am today. For that, I can’t hate her. 

The other reason is that I understand far too well the effect that Michael has on his toys. I only spent two months with him and I don’t think I’ll ever be truly free of him. Luna spent her entire childhood with him, learning that the only time you’re ever truly safe from the dark is when you have a candle to guide your way to safety.

I have to wonder if Simon Torquill knew that when he imprisoned Luna and Rayseline in nothingness. It’s a very exquisite torture for a girl who lived her childhood in the dark, but I can’t fathom how he would know. I plan to ask him when I find him _why_.

If Rayseline was telling the truth, I was Luna’s candle during their time of captivity. She told Raysel again and again that I would come for them, that I could guide them back to Sylvester. I failed. Maybe if I hadn’t, if I had found her and Rayseline in the nothingness before they spent fourteen years in it, Luna would be different She probably still wouldn’t have stood against Michael as he collected children, but she might have stood behind me when I did. I don’t know. Maybe that fear ran too deep. I remember how strained her voice was when she asked if her father was coming before she collapsed from salt poisoning.

She calls herself mad, and I don’t know that I can argue with that. How could she be anything else? She hid everything that made her the Dryad’s daughter who had known Oberon as a beloved grandfather and had grown up in Blind Michael’s hidden realm, because she thought that was what she needed to do to escape her father. If only that were true. Blood always tells true, and Luna has the blood of two people who exemplified Faerie madness running through her veins.

Luna wears her true face now. Her father can’t search for her in his Ride anymore, I made sure of that. Her mother can see her now, because of the rose that I delivered to Luna. She is able to be everything that makes her truly Luna now because I was her hero; she’s strange and beautiful now in a way that makes my heart hurt. All things Faerie have a love for beauty; I’m fae enough to admire her beauty, but I’m also Dochas Sidhe. Blood tells. 

Roses may be beautiful, and faerie roses more so, but that beauty is proportional to their thorns. And Luna Torquill, Duchess of Shadowed Hill and Dryad of Roses, is the most beautiful rose I have ever seen.


	2. And Some Thorns Have Lost Their Rose

Rayseline Torquill, only child of my liege lord, is the child I never found, and for this she hates me. She wouldn’t be the first to think I was more useful to her dead than alive, but she is the first who I remembered as a little redhaired girl with Sylvester’s smile and Luna’s mannerisms, who laughed at my stories and wanted to be friends with my daughter. I’m used to hate, since it comes with being a changeling. Like I said, hate’s useful as a weapon and I’m damned good at giving as much as I get back if I have to. Being hated by the daughter of my liege lord? That’s harder to get used to.

Raysel sleeps now, forced asleep by the same poison she used to kill Connor and to hurt Gillian. I should hate her for that. A changeling doesn’t own much, but they’d fight tooth and nail to protect what little they have. I had a surfeit of riches with those two, but I still remember what it was like to have nothing. If anyone other than her had hurt them, I would hurt that person back, hard enough that they’d never dream of hurting one of mine again. I’d hate anyone who hurt mine, and I wouldn’t care at all. Except if it was Raysel.

With the Luidaeg’s blood on my lips, though, I couldn’t hate Raysel. I knew too much about the scared girl she truly was. I don’t like pitying the people who hurt my loved ones. Hate is so much easier than pity. 

Raysel is an example of why fae have to be careful about their bloodlines. People whisper nasty things about the dangers that changelings pose, but in my experience hybrid fae are more dangerous. When I tasted the balance of Rayseline’s blood, it is was made up of things that could only have been mingled because of by magic. It’s one of those things that my mother should have sorted out before, but like everything else it’s left for me to sort out. That’s why I go and see her while she’s asleep Mixing bloodlines leads to insanity and Raysel is pretty damn insane.

If I were my mother, I could fix everything about Raysel’s bloodline with a drop of blood and asking nicely. Unfortunately I’m not Amandine, and no one knows where she is now. Seems like my mother’ll only show up once to show me how it’s done, and then she’ll leave me alone to fix up all of Faerie. I know how to fix Raysel’s blood. Hell, I’ve altered the balance of the blood three times now. But it’ll hurt. Worse, there’s nothing that means I have to do it right now. Chelsea needed the safeguards, the Queen of the Mists needed to shut up and Gillian … needed to have her choice confirmed. Raysel? She’s not going anywhere anytime soon. I can wait. I should wait. You don’t just rip someone’s heritage out of them. Besides, what would I take? 

She’s named ‘Rose’ but roses don’t bloom in the dark. Luna had Acacia and her forests. Raysel didn’t even have that much. She lived in the dark for almost all of her life and maybe the only reason she survived at all was because Blind Michael was her grandfather. Roses grow thorns to protect themselves but Raysel was lost so long that all she is is thorn and poison, ready to defend against anyone who might hurt her. It’s only now that I understand how much I have hurt her. Not by doing anything, but just by existing. Because I’m the hero daughter her father understands, and Raysel is the strange, broken child that he can never understand.

I’m the one who shines a light into dark places, the one who rescues lost children when no one else can. Sylvester understands that. Raysel, however, can’t be the hero. She is the dark places, and she is the lost child who was never found. Why would she know how to be a hero? She’s never had one help her. Worse, she knows that her father wishes she were more like me. It took me a while to understand that Sylvester thought of me as his daughter. I think I’m excused; changelings aren’t really used to pureblood Daione Sidhe adopting them into their family. Pets, sure. Family? Not a chance. So it took me a while to work out why Raysel hated me so much. It figures that the girl I once loved like a beloved niece has the worst case of sibling envy imaginable.

Maybe it’s not my place to try and save Rayseline Torquill. After all, it’s my fault that no one saved her the first time and she doesn’t want to be saved by me. But I owe it to Sylvester to try. He found a lost child once and made her his knight. One day his knight will save his lost child. 

I have time. She’s not going anywhere. The only time limit I have to try and make things right with Rayseline is my own life span. With all the tweaking that’s gone on with my blood, I have no idea how long that is. Let’s just hope I don’t get killed tomorrow crossing the street. You never know.

Maybe by the time she wakes up, I will have found the path to save her.


End file.
